Born at the Crest of the Empire

Saturday, June 10, 2006

The new "new plan for Iraq"

Bush is holding a two day strategy session on Iraq starting Monday at Camp David. (He went to Camp David Friday afternoon, but the meeting isn't until Monday. I guess he can't be disturbed on his "weekends.")

But take a look at the characterizations of this meeting by those involved.

You see, according to administration officials, the problems in Iraq are just that the programs have been marketed wrong, and once they're relaunched in their gleaming new packaging, with the proper political will to let US soldiers die while we wait, then the Iraqis will buy in and it will work. Honest.

More of the same.

(Which non-FoxNews media host do you think will be the most glowing as they speak of this repackaging as "a recognition of past mistakes" and "the president really attacking the problem?" Daryn Kagan? Tucker Carlson? The CNN White House correspondent, Maseurve?)

Picture of the Day - 3

A Medicare Timebomb

Honestly, I haven't kept up with all the details on the Medicare Drug Plan, but this surprises me. Millions of seniors on the Bush Drug Plan are about to get nailed for $3,600 that they don't see coming.

(The original source is in Arabic, but I trust Cole's interpretation.)

Also, further down in the same post, Prof. Cole points out that the new Sunni Defense Minister Al Ubaidi, and ex-Saddam Baathist, was confirmed primarily on Shia votes. The religious Sunni parties gave him no support at all, and it is those groups who are mostly tied to the resistance. So, the "Sunni" Defense Minister comes to power with primarily Shia/UIA backing. Just interesting in the factional dynamics of Iraq.

I don't know how much influence the US will have after funding the other side for so long, but once again it appears that Condi Rice has won an argument backed largely by the failure of the Cheney/Rumsfeld aggressive tactics and the facts on the ground. (See Iran.)

Does this shift in policy represent Condi's star rising or the hawks' star falling? Or is the diplomatic route still plan C after everything else has failed? Remember that since 2005, Condi Rice is now in charge of Iraq reconstruction. And that's going so well, isn't it?

Bilderberg in Ottawa.

For those of you who might not know, Bilderberg is a highly secretive meeting of the world's most richest and most powerful, although the guest list often includes a few odd choices. There are many who believe that Bilderberg is a giant conspiracy, a meeting of the world's elite where worldwide decisions are made on economics and policy. I'm never quite sure, but I always find the thing creepy.

And, perhaps the reason that the suspicions remain is the odd guestlist. Outside of the obvious, policy makers, Kissinger, Bryzynski, their Chinese and Russian counterparts, and business moguls and CEOs, there are always a few selections that just make you wonder.

One of the attendees at this secretive conference of 125 or so of the world's most influential political figures and CEO's is Ahmad Chalabi. Weird, huh? (Maybe Richard Perle got him in.)

The US army never leaves after a war, England, Germany, Japan, the Phillipines, Korea, Bosnia.... From WWII, the only major engagement that didn't leave a US footprint behind was Vietnam.

At some point there will be a drawdown of troops, but not a complete withdrawal. Those bases skirting the Iraqi, Iranian, and Saudi oilfields are one of the main reasons the Iraq war was launched.

Except Afghanistan. By the nature of the small initial deployment and use of local warlords, I really don't think the administration wanted to be there in the first place, but they have to be in Afghanistan because they're supposed to be chasing Bin Laden and that props up the geostrategic Iraq war.

And because of this lack of commitment, Afghanistan has turned worse and Karzai's government is getting desperate.

Shifting Zarqawi?

How about "A Dying Al-Zarqawi Tried to Get Away," that "Al-Zarqawi attempted to, sort of, turn away off the stretcher," and then "everybody re-secured him back onto the stretcher, but he died almost immediately thereafter," does that influence the image?

I don't know. I'm just curious.

(By the way, the Zarqawi alive story was the top story on CNN's web page this morning, big splash, big photo, now six hours later, it's not even on the front page.)

Blanket Amnesty! So, the majority party is allowed to break the laws so long as they hold their majority, and Arlen Specter will bend his "high principles" if there is a threat to his campaign money.

After his cancer scare Specter seemed to have a brief window of candor, courage, and honesty. I guess his ethics went into remission, too.

(I know that's across the line but I'm pissed.)

Just for context remember two other recent actions in the last month helping the Bush administration in complete contradiction to Specter's professed "beliefs," first voting the gay marriage amendment out of committee even while admitting being totally opposed to it, second, the complete turnabout on having telecom officials testify in the NSA hearing.

Now, this is a little different from the other NSA intrusions in that people on myspace have voluntarily put that information out there as publicly available. But, maybe we should describe these NSA programs instead as Seven Degrees of Guantanamo.

Picture of the Day - 2

Political Capital

Has anyone else noticed that over the last two weeks Bush and the Republicans are only talking about issues that are likely to fail in Congress? Immigration reform is not likely until next year and the gay marriage constitutional amendment was DOA. Even the Estate Tax Repeal is unlikely to go anywhere this term.

To top it off, there is no major policy legislation of any kind on the horizon in this election year. I mean, a rational response to low poll numbers would be to pass legislation that is highly popular, but they aren't going to do that. The Republicans are not going to do anything for the rest of the year.

The idea is that instead of running on accomplishments, you highlight problems which rile your voters and promise them solutions only after the next election. It is an unstated bargain which only works if voters believe that the current lack of action is due to forces beyond the majority's control.

It's part of the majority as minority, values as victims, impression that the Repubs have somehow cultivated among their base. It's not their fault if things don't get done, it's the Democrats. (The same Democratic juggernaut that is portrayed as weak kneed, with no agenda, uncoordinated, and in decline.)

Also, does anyone else find it odd how low Bush's profile was yesterday after the Zarqawi death? It's almost like they didn't want the unpopular Bush out there to distract from the good news. Or is it that they know that the killing will have little real impact, and didn't want Bush to have another "Mission Accomplished" moment? I just found his absence from the stage very odd.

While I'm talking vague politics, what are the possibilities and implications of a slowing economy? Before we get into a debate on the strength or weakness of the economy, I do understand the difference between Macro and Micro. I know that real wages have stagnated for years and inflation is taking it's bite, but significantly lately, the macro-numbers are starting fade and sag and show signs of some real problems, and that's a big deal.

Because no matter the arguments about distribution of wealth and income, a falling tide will lower all boats, and while Bush was getting no real political support for the "boom" he was claiming, I feel certain at this point he will take the blame if things start going south.

It's just another headwind this administration won't be able to handle. I think that's the element that may Bush approval approval numbers into the 20's. Can we call him the worst president then?

Zarqawi was a tool

This is from the Independent. It echoes other reporting about the US's use of Zarqawi as a propaganda piece against the US population, but it was the example at hand this morning.

This is not to say Zarqawi wasn't a bad guy, he was, but his promotion as a terror supervillian served everyone's interests, the US, Al Qaeda, the Sunni insurgency, the Iraqi government, and Zarqawi himself, whether it reflected reality or not.

And, check this out, the Texas Democratic party has sued the Republicans in an effort to keep Delay's name on the ballot for the fall election. I don't know if you remember, but his controversial method of taking his name off the ballot was to change his residency from Texas to Virginia, but you see, the Dems hold in their hands an affidavit signed by Delay when he filed for re-election where he claims he is eligible.

The judge issued a stay and, I don't have any sense where it's going, but the change in Tom Delay's political fortunes is funny to me.

Some thoughts on Zarqawi - A Grand Bargain.

First, let me say that I'm glad Zarqawi has been stopped. In the lingo of the administration, this was a "bad guy." But let's just explore this story a minute. (Wipe the cobwebs off your tinfoil hat, because I have almost no substantiation for what I'm going to say. If you don't like speculation, skip this post.)

There has been some previous reporting that the Sunni insurgency, the indigenous insurgency which is pursuing solely local goals, had grown increasingly disenchanted with Zarqawi. While Zarqawi was pursuing his vision of Al Qaeda's goals (Al Qaeda didn't like him either,) the major factions in the Sunni insurgency are fighting for domestic political gain, for their relative place and power in the future political structure of Iraq. Although they were more than happy to utilize Zarqawi, as he began to craft himself as a hero/martyr, he became increasingly less useful and began to work at cross purposes. Early on, Zarqawi's successful recruitment of foreign fighters was vital as it provided a core of crack troops to the Sunnis, but as the fighting has stretched on for three years, idigineous Iraqi Sunnis have had the opportunity to "train up," making those foreign fighters loose guns. (I can't search for supporting links right now because of blogger. Aaaargh.)

Now, that being said, let's look at the timing of the major Iraq events over the last few days. Iraqi Prime minister Maliki agrees to a release of 2,500 Sunni prisoners, making a "downpayment" release of 600 yesterday morning. Within hours after the release, the knowledge of Zarqawi's whereabouts suddenly becomes certain,

Then, this morning, a short time after the announcement of Zarqawi's killing, Maliki is suddenly able to announce an agreement on new Defense and Interior Ministers.

This series of events reads to me like a grand bargain was struck between the Sunnis and the Maliki government. Release some Sunni prisoners, some early as good faith, and we will give you Zarqawi and stop opposition to the Ministerial appointments.

This deal makes sense for all sides. The Sunnis gain the release of thousands of their people, but more importantly rid themselves of Zarqawi in a way that they will not be blamed for. The Maliki government gets rid of a major security threat and gets it's ministerial appointments. Oh, and the US gets to claim the kill which is good domestic PR and takes the anger off the Shia government averting another wave of sectarian reprisals. It's win-win-win.

Just a working theory. It may change.

(I have no proof, and I find it unlikely that if this is true, we will get any, because the only way this works is if the official story holds. Also, I can't edit this once it goes up, so if there're any major glaring errors, please be kind.)

From a non-expert view, it appears that Lewis liked to use cutouts in his operations. A briber would pay Lewis or a family member, and the Lewis would arrange for another congressman to do the act, or vice versa, he would do the act, but the payment would go to a cutout.

Zarqawi killed - Will it make a difference?

I think the death of Zarqawi will make some difference, at least in the short term on the number of high casualty bomb attacks. My understanding of the tapestry of violence that is the Iraq civil war is that a fair number (not all) of the large casualty bombings were being carried out by his group.

In the short term, I would expect the group to hurriedly execute anything else they have in the near preparation stage both in an attempt to prove they're not wounded, and in attempt to fire their bullets before they get caught. For the first time, the US seems to have gotten some really good high value intel on them.

But, it must be said that at this point, Al Qaeda in Iraq is only one of so many violent actors on the battlefield. The IED's, the death squads, and smaller casualty events both against the US and Iraqis that constitute the mass of the daily violence are largely being carried out by the various factions in the Civil War.

The real question on this that is yet to be answered this morning, is what other damage has been done to Zarqawi's group. We don't yet have ID's on the others who were killed in the airstrike, and we don't yet know how the intel was developed. Does the US have someone inside the group or was this an outside person who knew about a safe house visit?

Remember that there has been an increasingly difficult relationship between the mainline Iraqi-based insurgency and Zarqawi's group peopled with so many foreigners. Their goals and his goals have diverged since negotiations on the government started so many months ago. It's certainly possible that the Sunni insurgency, or some group within it, told the US where he was to get rid of him and get another leader in who they "could work with." We just don't know at this point.

Also, it must be noted that the relationship between Zarqawi's "Al Qaeda" in Iraq and the Bin Laden led Al Qaeda has always been fairly tenuous. I don't know how much Zarqawi was truly working with Al Qaeda and how much the association was just claimed to give him authority. I have to figure that, at the very least, there was little if any conversation and coordination between them, because I would think that communications from Iraq to Pakistan are probably the most monitored in the world.

I don't think Zarqawi's death will substantially dispirit the group, however, succession now becomes a major issue. If you had travelled to Iraq from Britain for example, I don't think this would make you turn around and go home.

Will there be a clean succession or will we see a fracturing of the group, in which case there might be several smaller groups attempting to carry out attacks in an attempt to grab the mantle?

We're also going to find out over the near term how much of the anti-US Sunni resistance in Anbar was constructed, supported, and carried out by that group.

These are just first thoughts, and I would be quite ecstatic of somehow this dealt a major blow to the overall level of violence in Iraq, but my sense is that we're too far down the road for this to make that major of an impact. The Al Qaeda attack on the Askariyah shrine (the "golden mosque") in Samarra really lit the fuse on the civil war. Since that attack, the significant majority of the violence has been carried out in factional fighting.

So, I do see this as a success in many regards, but it will not even slow the mainline violence of the Civil War, and depending who else was killed in the strike, may or may not hobble his group in the near term. This is certainly a positive step, especially in a PR sense, but as to the degree of difference it will really make, I just don't see all that much.

(Perhaps I should note here that none of the US officials are saying this is going to make any real difference. Bush. Gen. Casey.)

UPDATE: From Juan Cole, we have a report "that groups in Fallujah have launched attacks on Zarqawi followers there after the latter attacked the al-Husain Mosque in the Askari quarter two days ago." That would seem to support the possibility that a Sunni insurgent group "turned Zarqawi over" to the US which is a really intriguing possibility. (The source is in Arabic so I'm just going to trust him.)

Picture of the Day - 2

Quick Facts on the renditions story

Dick Marty, the Swiss investigator examining US rendition flights through Europe to the secret CIA prisons in Poland and Romania, has released a report detailing some of his findings. I found all the articles on this rather convoluted except this one with its nice brief summary.

The linguistic deviltry of "The Culture War"

I've heard the phrase a thousand times, but the real subtext of the overused "culture war" just suddenly snapped into focus for me this morning. By the use of that phrase, an enemy is created, and, apparently, by supporting individual rights and freedoms, I'm that enemy of America. I didn't even know I was at war.

A positive for "our side," Judge Roy Moore, the Alabama judge who tried to launch a political career by demanding the ten commandments be displayed everywhere was beaten by 2-1 in his bid to be the Republican candidate for governor of Alabama. Yay godless, communist liberals. Push 'em back. Push 'em back. Waaaaay back.

So, you're in Iraq for your second or third tour, and each time you come back the tone from the Iraqis has grown increasingly hostile. You've watched friends get maimed and killed and now, suddenly, the guys you captured are being released? How do you think that's going to go down with the troops?

Would this make you more likely or less likely to apprehend subjects alive?

This is really bad.

(Notice there's no affirmative quote in this article from anybody in the US military going on the record to say they support this or that it's a good idea. Or the AP version. Or Reuters.)

A stray thought on the 2006 midterms

One of the oddest possible outcomes of the 2006 midterm elections is that the Congressional seats and Senate offices most likely to flip from Republican to Democrat are the more moderate seats leaving the "redder" Republicans with more relative power within their party.

So, a shift to the left in the country could produce a Republican party further to the right.

Some Thoughts on Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is not a sign of a society in ascension.

Fundamentalist tendencies, whether they are religious or political, tend to develop among cultures under perceived threat. One way to force a movement towards fundamentalism is to create a sense of external threat to the group.

Ascension within fundamentalist structures requires blind devotion to principles. Once the momentum of a fundamentalist movement is formed, increasingly extreme statements and acts of devotion are required. Fundamentalist structures tend to create fanatics.

The fundamentalist mindset is prone towards absolutist views of the world, making clear black and white distinctions between those in the group and those outside the group. This strict division often manifests itself as a perceived battle of purity versus heresy. Challenges to the fundamentalist belief set are often met with overly aggresive response.

Fundamentalist organizations frequently throw up leader imbued with mythical characteristics which represent the purest ideals of the fundamentalist movement.

Over time, fundamentalist structures tend to destroy themselves either through exclusion or infighting over increasingly narrow doctrinal disputes.

Frequently, one group will splinter off preaching a more radical version of the fundamentalist belief. This fracturing often creates a smaller extremely radical sect of the fundamentalist movement constituted of individuals who believe that the original group was not stringent enough.

Fundamentalist structures often end after some excessive act carried out in the movement's name.

(These are just random thoughts this afternoon. Any additions, comments, or corrections would be welcomed.)

It must be an election year

The media likes all of these issues, besides Iraq, because they are "easy" stories. Gay marriage, immigration, and vague terror threats involve no cost and practically no reporting. The 24 hour networks can fill their vast empty spaces by isolating these issues down to he said/she said and get think tankers and politicians to act as unpaid talent.

I mean, look at the majority of the Iraq coverage (the majority of airtime at least.) The coverage of Iraq is very rarely about reporting, but instead reduced down to a pro-Bush and anti-Bush representative talking about how they feel about Iraq and Iraq policy. I don't give a crap how Bob Shrum feels, or Pat Buchanon. That doesn't help anybody but the political parties and the 24 hour networks.

The simpler these issues are, and the more free from actual fact, the better for the networks. The constructed conflict is about feeling not thinking. That's why Colbert is so brilliant, and that's why Jon Stewart was able to take apart Crossfire. (Tucker Carlson is still "hurting America" by the way.)

Maliki's fragile coalition

I had figured that it would be subduing the Shia splinter group in Basra that would fracture Maliki's governing coalition, and this might just be heavy politics over the post, but if Maliki can't hold the Shia coalition together, whatever pretense of government that is in Iraq may crumble.

The entire "Horn of Africa" region is spiralling downward right now with the problems in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia. The US is operating a small force of military and intelligence officers out of Djibouti, but the trending right now is towards a failed region with Islamic militias carving out territories.

I don't think these groups could affect the level of control to shield Bin Laden, but if the states do go "lawless," there could well be a protected space for other members of Al Qaeda.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Picture of the Day - 3

Meanwhile,

A morgue worker unloads a cardboard box of severed heads at the morgue in Baqouba, Iraq Saturday, June 3, 2006. Iraqi police on Saturday found eight severed heads north of Baghdad with a note indicating at least one of the men were killed in retaliation for the slaying of four Shiite doctors, authorities said. (AP Photo/Adam Hadi)

(There were actually two boxes, but those pictures pushed the line. Here and here.)

More notes on the Gay Marriage pandering

First, let me say how pleased I am that almost every report on this gay-baiting disgrace is making note of the fact that it is merely a political ploy and has no chance of passing. The recognition that this is just political posturing for votes is such an improvement on the unskeptical 2004 coverage. Also, a lot of the articles contain quotes from "the base" agreeing that the Republicans are blowing election year smoke. Notes:

Tony Snow is just awful. He called "marriage protection" a civil rights issue, (perhaps he meant reversing civil rights?) and then he couldn't define civil rights among many other errors. Holden does a more complete takedown of that error today and several more.

Also, why the small crowd jammed into the small room? (which created a weird space) "The White House told activists that Monday's speech would be in the Rose Garden, but after criticism that he was using such a symbolic site, the White House moved it to an office building next door." (CNN reports that it was done "without explanation.")

Watching these guys, I think we can agree there's more story there than a White House concern over the use of a "symbolic site."

Fear of protest? "Homoterrorists"? Maybe because they couldn't hide Dobson and Perkins outside? I don't know, but I hope somebody can dig out the reason for the sudden change. I'll bet it would gut the whole effort.

Picture of the Day

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Call me a cynic, but......

This story outlining Saddam's crimes against humanity and a mass grave of 28 bodies just suddenly appears on the front page of the NYTimes in the week following all the Haditha press and other allegations of excessive force, and, it's apparently sourced to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Did you get the talking points clearly enough? Not only was Saddam horribly evil, far worse than anything the US might have done, and it was a lack of courage in George the Better in "not finishing the fight" that caused this to happen.

Now, it has to be said that John Burns is a top notch war correspondent, but after years of no reporting on any of the mass grave sites, suddenly it's a big front page story?

Fighting them over there....

I found this article interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it is curious that these British citizens would head to Iraq to carry out suicide bombings for Al Qaeda rather than staying for operations in their British home. Second, I think it's notable that the trickle of western recruitment is broadening to a stream.

Compressing History

One of the things that has long fascinated me in news coverage is the way that news stories which once covered every front page are eventually reduced to brief explanatory parentheticals through time. It's a necessary function because as you are writing current news, it is not practical to recover all the elements of a previous story, but in that compression, often critical context is lost, and very often, this compression ends up misrepresenting reality or propagating open falsehoods.

One example that's always bugged me is the claim that Saddam "threw the inspectors out" in 1998. What actually happened is that he limited their ability to look inside some of his "palaces" and government buildings as well as trcking their movements and sending warnings to the sites facing inspection so that they could rapidly clean up.

Saddam's concern, later proved correct, was that the weapons inspection teams were riddled with foreign spies trying to gather information seperate from the inspections. So, Saddam severely limited their access to some secure sites that were involved with defense outside WMD. Faced with this, the US forced a showdown that involved pulling out the inspectors before the missile attacks.

But see, that's way too long to include in every article about Saddam and Iraq, so the press seems to have settled instead on the shorthand version that "Saddam threw the inspectors out" even though it is plainly incorrect.

This little inaccuracies can be extremely important as they serve to alter history in the collective understanding, and, thus, these innacuracies can have an impact on future policies and actions.

The "Saddam threw the inspectors out" compression is just one rather egregious example of the "compression of history" that takes the form of journalistic shorthand when that period is discussed. There are obvious political reasons that version has been propagated. So, on to the current examples that caught my attention lately.

Really? That was a widely held belief? To my memory only one person ever made that claim, Paul Wolfowitz, and he was one of the most hawkish towards war with Iraq. He was ridiculed at the time for the claim, and yet that "expectation" now covers us all? Or from the WaPo,

Skeptics recall? Colin Powell, Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman, just as a short list, were all widely reported in the pages of the WaPo as having been shut out.

These are very short term versions of this phenomena which is often most visibly present in the obituaries of major political figures. As example, I'll be very curious to read the Kissinger obituary.

It's through this selective compression that that the characterization of an individual or an event mutates through time. This compression is often the beginning stage in the formation of history.

And, it matters. Look at the history of Reagan that has been crafted, "tax cutter," "booming economy," defeated the Soviets. It is largely on this mythical description that the Republicans have claimed their position as the party better on the economy and better on defense. And that myth shifted the country's impression and led to the current Republican majority we see now. To give a sense of the depth of it, look how much incompetence, how many failures it has taken for the Bush administration to shake the grip of this myth.

The myth underlying the impression of the Republican party could just as easily be Nixon. And, going forward, it may well be Bush. That's why the "giver of freedom" tag is so important for the Republicans to attach to the Bush legacy. It will serve to justify the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan as the true horror of those wars slowly becomes reduced to a shorthand list of 2,475 killed and 18,000 wounded.

I don't know, I'm really starting to ramble. I hope you found something thought provoking in this. If not, sorry to waste your time. But, I do think that this is why all the blogs that do media criticism should be lauded, even if they're just chasing down little details. Because those little details can develop over time and alter current actions.

(This post is for Greyhair who took me to task once for minimizing media criticism which wasn't my intention. My point was that I didn't like to do media criticism because it never ends. But I do recognize it as vitally important.)

The Vatican and China

There's been a very interesting conflict going on between the Catholic Church and China over the last few years. There was the Chinese appointment of bishops without Vatican approval and continued pressure by the Vatican to alter the Chinese government's policies.

The latest is open criticism of the Tiananmen crackdown by the highest Catholic official in the country.

The reason I find this interesting is that I see some echo of the Vatican's efforts against the Soviet Union in the Eastern Bloc states. I don't know if it will develop to that level, but it does appear that the Catholic Church seems to be acting as one of the west's lever points on the Chinese government.

Picture of the Day

South of the Border

Three articles in the last few days about Central/South America's shift to the left and away from America.

The presidents of 10 countries from Mexico to Columbia signed a joint venture to develop oil, gas, and hydroelectric power. The numbers are relatively small, but it appears this is being done independent of the energy "majors." If this is a trend, it's a big one towards self development and collective independence.

Evo Morales in Bolivia has begun his "agrarian revolution," seizing land from the wealthy landowners and turning it over to the poor and indiginous peoples. No telling yet how the recipients are designated, whether it is a genuine land reform or a political giveaway similar to Zimbabwe.

Mexico City's socialist ex-mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is doing well enough in the runup to the presidential election that the NYTimes felt it necessary to do a giant hit piece on him.

Listen Mr. Anti-Immigration Man, if you want to stop illegal immigration, your best bet is a more socialist Mexico that eases the oppressive inequity and raises living standards for the poorest Mexicans. I know, it runs against everything you were told on FoxNews, but it's the best way to stem the flow.

About This Blog

This is not the America I was brought up to believe in.
This blog seeks to highlight abuse of power, deception, corruption, and just plain bad ideas in government and corporations.
Updated several times a day.